The Mayflower Ancestry of Margaret Deborah Page
~ AND THE DESCENDANTS OF RUTH FULLER FRANCISCO ~
I. THE ROYAL FLUSH
I think I might be done.
Well, as "done" as any genealogist ever is with any line. But yes, I think the heavy lifting is finally finished. I’m still technically waiting on one last "proof verification," but the consensus among fellow researchers is that I don’t really need it. They tell me the final argument for the last of the eight generations—that for Annie Bell Cisco King—stands perfectly well on its own. Waiting on this final piece of the puzzle, it seems, is just garnish. An accoutrement.
It has been quite a journey. First, I "traveled" through Ruth Fuller, that sixth-generation descendant of Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller and his son Samuel. I’m happy to report I now have her thoroughly identified as the wife of Old Henry Francisco. In fact, my dear Ruth should be making her formal debut in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record next month. She’ll be in print, cementing her own particular legacy in a peer-reviewed journal that’s been doing this since 1869. No pressure or anything.
It was from Ruth Fuller Francisco’s branch that I was able to tell Peggy’s story.
To be honest, I hadn't really planned on it being Peggy’s story—or rather, The Mayflower Ancestry of Margaret Deborah Page. This project began simply because my friend Paige asked me to embark on it. The realization that the story actually belonged to her mother, Peggy, didn't hit me immediately. But as the research began to take shape, I realized something important: whatever truths this research might offer, they weren't really a gift from me to Paige. They were given to Paige through her mother, and through the great Mayflower descendants who walked before her.
Women like Ruth Fuller Francisco. Women like Annie Belle Cisco King.
So yes, I might be done.
Though I have to admit, I’d still sure love to see that last shred of official evidence for Annie King. Don't quote me, but I feel a bit like a card player who looks down, sees he’s holding a tentative Royal Flush, but just has to pull that final card to be absolutely certain. That last bit of proof is an official accounting of the 1889 death of Annie Bell (Cisco) King out of Jennings County, Indiana. Do I really need it? Every genealogy mentor I’ve ever learned from tells me I do. They tell me that without it, I haven’t completely met the Genealogical Proof Standard—that ever-elusive "GPS" that always seems just out of reach, even when you’ve already proven your argument ad nauseam.
And yet, the argument we do have seems to hold its own weight:
The Case for Anna Belle (Cisco) King
Direct Statements: Four of her own children independently named Annie Cisco as their mother on their vital records—Don Carloss on his 1936 Social Security application and 1944 Tennessee death certificate, John Harrison on his Social Security record, and Florence Jane on her 1976 Indiana death certificate.
The Kinship Link: Her paternal uncle, Calvin Cisco—Clark's elder brother and the sitting Madison City Marshal—was recorded in the Madison Courier on June 6, 1889, as having attended "the funeral of his niece, Mrs. Robert King." Given that Calvin's only documented brother in the Cisco line is Shelton Clark, that contemporary statement places Anna Belle as Clark's daughter without remainder.
Corroborating Evidence: This is fully supported by an 1898 statutory pension claim filed by Annie King on Clark's service (which required her status as his minor child); the 1860 census enumeration of a Cisco daughter of suitable age in Clark's household; the 1880 residential proximity of Anna King's household to that of Clark's son; and the total elimination of every alternative same-age Cisco female candidate in Madison.
Conflicting Evidence: None has been found.
Yeah, I think I might finally be done. Version 52 (and then some) has officially been sent to the printers, and it was a hard-fought victory.
II. A LINE AGAINST THE GRAIN
It's an odd and somewhat unsettling feeling putting together an additional eight-generation line of descent from Old Edward Fuller. However, I knew at the very start it was there; I could just feel it.
Okay, okay, I know how that sounds. Really, Jeff? You could feel it? But it's true. At the very beginning of all this, I could sense that Paige's Mayflower ancestry was waiting to be found. This is a genuinely unique line—especially for Paige. It follows a singular North-to-South migration pattern in a combined lineage that is otherwise 98% South of the Mason-Dixon line. In researching family histories, I see a lot of East-West migration patterns, but I rarely see one like this, let alone leading back to the Mayflower.
A line that moved from Cape Cod, to Connecticut, to New York, to Ohio, to Indiana, and then pushed even further south into Tennessee... you just don't see it. Paige's ancestry was subtly unique, and I felt it from the start.
I felt it when I looked at the massive volumes of data on the Cisco/Sisco/Francisco families—families that interweave so closely they seem to exist purely to confuse future genealogists. I knew it when I saw that Ruth Fuller Francisco had been misidentified in major works like Frank Doherty's Settlers of the Beekman Patent and Hyslop's Genealogy of Some Descendants of Edward Fuller. And I certainly felt it in the agonizing lack of records while trying to pinpoint Ruth's descendant, Annie Belle Cisco King.
But putting it all together into a cohesive book? (Yikes.)
III. LEGACY AND RENEWAL
My main goal is simply to present a polished, heirloom-quality volume to Paige in memory of her mother, Peggy. I have tried my best to treat Peggy's recent passing quietly throughout the work, acknowledging her life without letting the book become a monument to grief.
As I assembled the genealogy, I did not want to dwell exclusively on death. This isn't to say her passing isn't genealogically relevant, because of course it is. Rather, it's just my belief that a personal family history doesn't have to emphasize loss. Genealogy should ultimately be about legacy, continuity, and the renewal of new lines going forward. We all pass in the end. If we are fortunate, we live on through our family. That is exactly what I wanted to show here for both Peggy and Paige.
Of course, actually producing the book meant fighting the formatting demons. I can arrange a genealogy. I can cull facts, curate an argument from sparse vital records, and aim a pretty good arrow at the Genealogical Proof Standard. But when it comes to assembling PDFs, wrestling with Word documents, resizing images, figuring out "Recto and Verso" displays, coordinating blank pages, or suppressing headers and properly placing superscripts... well, this seventy-year-old brain gets lost in a hurry.
Still, I have high hopes that it will come out looking nice and won’t read like a jumbled mess. I really want The Mayflower Ancestry of Margaret Deborah Page to be a beautiful, hardbound book—and not look like a mis-printed edition of And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. I want it to be something Paige can proudly pass down to her own kids.
It is scheduled to arrive in about two weeks—the proof copy, at least. It may very well turn out to be the only copy ever printed of the full book. Meanwhile, the standalone article, Ruth Fuller, Wife of Henry Francisco of Whitehall, New York, will arrive under separate cover through the NYGBR. For the book, I’ve included that NYGBR article as an appendix for easy reference. I might be dancing on the edge of some copyright technicality by binding them together, but beats me—I’m just an old researcher trying to ensure the full tale gets told.
I guess that's it. Now we wait and hope for the best. I'm incredibly excited to get this to Paige, and deeply honored to have had the chance to preserve Peggy's memory.
As with any genealogy there will be mistakes. There will be omissions.
I'm just honored to have brought some of the truth to light.
I'm honored to have told the tale.
☮
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